By HARVEY SIMPSON

Dispatch Sports Editor

CORDELE — Class A Crisp Academy had no better luck in its third attempt to score a fast-pitch softball win over Class AAA Southland than it did its first two tries.

Having dropped a 9-2 tournament decision to the Lady Raiders in Leesburg and suffered a 6-4 road loss to the Americus-based girls during the month of August, the Lady Wildcats lost to them 11-3 here Tuesday.

“Going up against good Class AAA teams is killing our record (Crisp’s 1-0-1 mark vs. Deerfield-Windsor makes it 0-4-1 against the bigger private schools), but a good thing about that is that playing them should only make us better come tournament time,” coach Bill McWilliams said.

“And to be honest, this one would have been a little more interesting had we gotten off the bus, so to speak, ready to play. When it was obvious our minds weren’t on the game at the start, though, they took us to the cleaners in a first inning that turned out to be a nightmare.”

After spotting their guests an 8-0 lead in the initial frame, the Lady Wildcats played them to a 3-3 draw the rest of the way and that fact didn’t go unnoticed by McWilliams.

“To the girls’ credit, a lesser team would have folded after falling behind that badly right off the bat,” McWilliams said. “But we didn’t as we instead hung in there and played them tough the rest of the way.”

Two walks, three hits and a trio of Crisp errors figured in the eight-run eruption Southland had to open the contest.

Crisp got its first score in the second inning when Brandi Brewer singled, advanced to second on Joyner Ivey’s grounder, stole third and came home on a passed ball.

The Lady Wildcats closed to within 8-3 an inning later when Brittany Brewer, who had singled, and Libbi Collins, who had reached on an error, both sped home as Abbe Jolly reached on another Southland miscue.

While that would be all the runs the home team would get on the day, the visitors eventually invoked the eight-run mercy rule in effect after five innings by scoring once in the fourth and twice in the fifth.

“We’ll try to re-group and carry the focus we had the last four innings into our Thursday game (here at 4:30) against Fullington,” McWilliams said. “If we do that, hopefully we’ll have a better result especially with that being our first region game of the year.”